


through warped glass

by Aesoleucian



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Gen, sasha lives!, takes place post s3 finale, technically not canon divergence but also not gonna happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-03 20:26:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16332896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aesoleucian/pseuds/Aesoleucian
Summary: Sasha has been in the labyrinth for… as long as she can remember. Before that, where was she? Somewhere… underground. Looking at… something that… was like this. Another labyrinth. It doesn’t matter now, she supposes. All that matters is that she got in through a door, and a door is the way she’s going to get out. So she keeps walking.





	through warped glass

**Author's Note:**

> As this is a story about The Spiral, be prepared for unreality and weird hallucinations. As this is a story I refuse to edit, please enjoy.

Sasha has been in the labyrinth for… as long as she can remember. Before that, where was she? Somewhere… underground. Looking at… something that… was like this. Another labyrinth. It doesn’t matter now, she supposes. All that matters is that she got in through a door, and a door is the way she’s going to get out. So she keeps walking.

Very, very occasionally she’s seen movement, like another person from far off. She would always break into a run and shout for them to wait, not daring to blink in case they disappeared. But they would vanish around the curve of the corridor and she would run and run and never see them again. She spent a long time sitting in one place just waiting to see if anyone would come. A lot of people once said her patience was one of her best qualities. Maybe people said that, if people existed once. But no-one really seems to exist here.

Until they do.

Very suddenly she notices that all the pictures on the walls are parts of a body. One to her left is a hand, the fingers stretching out in front of her through all the other pictures. To her right she thinks is a long neck. In each picture a different angle, a different size. She’s not sure if she wants to follow it. What she finds almost certainly will not be a person. But what is a person here? She reminds herself that she has less common sense than curiosity, as someone who could have been her mother could have always said. It can’t be worse than nothing— _nothing_ is the most terrifying thing she can find. So she walks and walks and walks until her hips are aching again and she sees the point of a chin beginning to appear in some of the pictures. More of them aren’t neck, though. Some of them are feet and legs and then—then one is an eye.

It blinks.

Sasha jumps and forces herself to look at it. Makes herself watch until it blinks again so she’ll know for sure. “Hello,” she says in a voice creaky from disuse.

Out of the mirror comes a person. _Maybe_ out of the mirror? There wasn’t a mirror. Maybe she travels in another way. But she’s standing there, unutterably long in every part of her; somewhat shorter than Sasha. “Hello?” says the long woman. “What are you doing in here? Did I let you in here?”

Sasha stares at her. She’s trying to think of any question to ask that would have a meaningful answer, but she can’t. So she just shrugs. “I came in through a door. Maybe I can get out through one if I walk long enough. It must be around here somewhere.”

“You used to work at the Archives,” says the woman. “Oh, dear, I hope I wasn’t going to eat you. I don’t think I’d like that. You don’t seem very nourishing anyway.”

“I, uh, I don’t think I’d like it either. So thanks for not doing that. How did you get in here?”

“That’s not really describable. I can take you out, though. I don’t really think you should be in here. I’m sure the Archivist was worried sick.”

And the woman points toward a door. Sasha stares at it without blinking, and slowly steps forward to close her hand over the handle. And turns it.

And then she is not in the labyrinth.

She is in a familiar place that she can’t quite name until the woman says, “So this is where you live? Helen would have had quite a lot to say about this place. It’s not very good, is it?”

“Is it? I mean, who’s Helen?”

“Me, I suppose. Listen, I’ll leave you here. Tell the Archivist I helped you, when he wakes up. He doesn’t like me very much, even though I like him.”

Before Sasha can ask anything about any of that, Helen and her door are gone.

Something about the quality of the light coming in the windows seems to indicate that she has somewhere to be. She lets muscle memory take her to the door, and smiles delightedly at it as she locks it. There’s another door down the stairs. She can’t stop smiling at all the doors she sees.

She does get lost in the underground, though. She momentarily forgets to not think, and then gets very dizzy and can’t logic her way toward where she needs to go. She’s here to get on a _train_ , which is the most sensible kind of corridor, the kind where the doors go somewhere different every time they open. But she doesn’t know which one. She just has to mutter all their names fiercely to herself on the tube map until she mutters, “Victoria!” And that sounds so familiar it has to be right.

She gets on the train to Morden. She waits, staring at the advertisements. She’s not entirely sure whether she can read or not. She gets off the train. She gets on the train to Brixton. She gets off the train. She tries not to think but still gets lost twice on the way to the Magnus Institute. But she does make it to the handsome double doors at the entrance, and smiles at them, and opens them both. Behind the desk is the first person since Helen that she has actually had to consider as a person. This is because the person behind the desk says, “Good morning. Are you here to make a statement, or do you want to apply for a research permit?”

“I work here,” says Sasha uncertainly. “At least I did last time I came in. I don’t know how long I’ve been away. I’m Sasha James?”

The woman—ah, her name is Rosie!—blinks at her uncertainly. “No you’re not,” says Rosie. “I was quite good friends with Sasha before she left payroll.”

“Right. I’d like to make a statement, then. Because something very strange is happening to me right now.”

“All right,” says Rosie placatingly. “Our head archivist is out right now, but you can make a written statement or talk to one of the assistants if you like.”

“What happened to him?”

“Er… well, he’s actually in the hospital. They’ve assured us he’ll be waking up soon, though.”

“Oh. Um, I guess I’ll talk to an assistant, then. Is Tim in?”

Rosie looks away and says, “I’ll see who’s available. You can take a seat while you wait.”

Sasha waits, glancing every so often at the double doors. They’re not going anywhere, which is puzzling. None of the doors in this room have moved at all. Logically, they probably shouldn’t, but it feels wrong that they don’t.

The assistant who comes out is a solidly built Black woman with her hair pulled back into a puff, wearing a vaguely familiar shirt that says _Ghost Hunt UK_ on. She’s fairly certain that this woman is not the same person who she remembers wearing that shirt, but it seems perfectly possible that someone could change appearance and still wear the same shirt. Or change their shirt, she supposes. “Nice day, isn’t it?” says the woman, holding the door open for Sasha. “Just caught a glimpse out of the window. What I wouldn’t give to have a job where I’m not stuck in a basement. What do you do?”

“I work here,” says Sasha, craning her neck around to see the window as the door closes behind them. She forgot about windows and assumed it was a mirror. “Are you new? Just that there aren’t a lot of archival assistants and it’s not like we have high turnover. Or maybe you’re trying out a new look?”

The woman gives her a deeply dubious look. “I’m Basira Hussain. I’ve been working here for… what is it, maybe five months? Here’s the room. Do you want to make your statement for the recorder or write it down?”

Sasha rubs her eyes. “I _want_ to make it to Jon, but I guess I’ll just do the recorder. You’re going to need the magnetic tape one.” It’s already on the table, and already running. Huh. Basira is very efficient, Sasha never even saw her turn it on. “Right.” She sits down and pulls in her chair as quietly as possible, which is not very. “Statement of Sasha James, archival assistant at the Magnus Institute, London. Statement taken direct from subject… er, what day is it?”

Basira is staring at her now. “Sasha… James?”

“As far as I remember.”

“You can’t be Sasha James.”

Sasha is starting to get annoyed with all of this. She kind of thought that when she got out of the labyrinth everything would start making _sense_ , but if anything it’s _more_ confusing. “That’s what Rosie said, but you know what? I don’t believe her. Why can’t I be Sasha James?”

“Well, I’ve seen pictures of you. I guess… well, I guess those weren’t really pictures of you. That’s not really proof, but aside from that you’re also supposed to be dead.”

“No-one told me,” says Sasha. “How did I die, then?”

“You were… I can’t believe I’m doing this. I don’t know why you would claim to be the real Sasha, or how you would know what you know, but I don’t have to tell you the Archive’s private business. Just make your statement, all right?”

“Statement taken direct from subject, date unknown,” says Sasha peevishly.

“August seventh, 2017,” Basira adds.

“Jesus, really? It’s been over a year? Well. Whatever. In June and July 2016 there was a… yes, it was an infestation of worms. I remember we had to keep stepping on them, and Martin slept with a corkscrew. He was too afraid to go home so he was sleeping in one of the storage rooms. I woke him up one time when I came back late at night… No, that’s not very important. The important thing is that all the worms came in at once, and Jane Prentiss was there. I told… I told Tim to… I can’t remember what I told him. I do know I got Elias to turn on the fire suppression system. It was CO2, which is really good for killing the worms. I’d gone to hide in artifact storage because the door seals really well, but there was a labyrinth in there that… something came out of. I don’t remember it very well, it was a long time ago. But I screamed. And then it was a woman. And then I left through the door.” She sighs, frustrated. This isn’t how statements are supposed to sound. They’re supposed to have a lot of personal details and how you felt and exact dates and everything. Somehow she feels if Jon were here she’d be able to make a proper statement. “I walked through the other labyrinth for a long time until I met Helen. I think her name is Helen, she wasn’t very clear about it. And she found me a door that took me home, so I came in for work. But Rosie didn’t recognize me and she says Jon’s in the hospital. What’s all of this about?”

Basira isn’t looking at Sasha. She’s dialing her phone. Sasha can hear it ringing faintly on the other end, and a small voice says, “Basira?”

“Hey, are you with Martin right now? …All right, I’ll text him. I need you to come up to 127 and confirm something for me. Yeah, no, it’s something he’ll want to see too.” She hangs up and looks at Sasha, who’s watching her. “Melanie’s the only one who ever noticed the difference. I don’t think anyone else in the world would recognize you.”

“Would you _please_ tell me what’s going on?”

“You were replaced. By a Not-Sasha. And everyone but Melanie forgot what you looked like. Only I guess Jon figured it out eventually. Everyone thought it killed you.”

A person sprints into the large mirror on the wall to Sasha’s right; the door opens and it’s Melanie… King, wasn’t it?

“Sasha,” says Melanie. “What is this, Basira, some kind of prank?”

“Everyone has been incredibly unhelpful,” Sasha announces, to the room at large. “But we’ve met at least. I think we even had lunch once. You can tell Basira I work here, or at least I did before I was apparently killed.”

“She got here through the spiral, somehow,” Basira explains, in a frustratingly opaque way. “Michael must have rescued her for some reason. Maybe to… to toy with her.”

Was he there? She can’t remember. It should be easy to remember someone like him. Assuming he was like anything. Wasn’t he very long, like Helen?

Suddenly there are two points of strong pressure on her shoulders. Melanie is gripping them hard, staring into Sasha’s face. “You are Sasha? You really are? Can’t we, I don’t know, do some tests to figure it out?” Sasha looks up at Melanie, the freckles that almost disappear into the shadows on her face, the slight curl of her red hair. Melanie King is the realest thing that has happened to Sasha in over a year. She wants to take Melanie’s face in her hands and memorize its texture, map out its shape for when it changes. That might be a little too much, so she settles for folding her hands over Melanie’s hands where they’re gripping her shoulders. Melanie’s knuckles are sharp and tense and her hands twitch when Sasha touches them. “What are you doing?”

“You’re the one who started the grabbing,” Sasha points out very reasonably. She doesn’t let go. She feels right now that if she lets go something awful will happen. “Look, I don’t really understand what’s going on because I’ve been stuck in a labyrinth for apparently over a year and space doesn’t work quite right and I’m starting to think time doesn’t work quite right. But I remember you. I like your new haircut.”

Melanie’s face twists into surprise and she blinks. “Thank… you? But you do understand that we have to lock you up in case you’re another Not-Sasha.”

Sasha does _not_ understand, but nobody else seems to find that relevant as Martin comes in and gets the whole story from Basira and Melanie talking over each other and fetches her a very comfortingly solid mug of tea and a small packet of chocolate-covered biscuits. She chews slowly, swallows, and feels a sudden yawning cavern open in her stomach. “I haven’t eaten anything since 2016,” she groans. Melanie runs off to get something from a vending machine, telling Basira and Martin to stay here and watch Sasha. Martin runs off to get more biscuits. The recorder runs out of tape and Basira runs off to get more tape, telling Sasha she’s locking the door from the outside, as a precaution. That’s when the other man appears.

She doesn’t see him in the mirror— _window_ —before he comes in, like the others. She’s not even positive he opened the door, although obviously opening a door is not the only way to get from one side to another. The man is tall and has a smile that shows a great number of teeth. “There’s been quite a fuss about you,” he says amiably. “And I didn’t want to leave you all alone in here. You’ve come in to give a statement, then? Did you finish?”

“Er, no. Basira’s off getting more tape. The recorder ran out because everyone argued so long. I don’t know that there’s anything more I can say, though. Nobody really seems to know what’s happened to me. I might have to actually ask for my job back.”

“Oh, did you work here?” There’s a strange air of disappointment to the man. “I suppose you’d be Sasha James, then? The dead woman?”

“Yes, except obviously I’m not dead.”

“Well, perhaps we can get you a job of some kind. I’m the new director, by the way. Peter Lukas.” He holds out his hand and she takes it, feeling almost a sense of deja vu—a hand like a wet leather bag full of sharp stones—before she recalls it and puts a name to it.

“What happened to Elias?” she asks, because commenting on this man’s cold fog-and-mud hand would be a very stupid idea.

“He’s in prison! Can’t say I understand what he was thinking, confessing to two murders on tape, but I suppose he’s always been very confident in his abilities.” It’s at that moment that Sasha knows she will never truly leave the labyrinth. Elias is steady, dull, skeptical, and almost totally useless. He should not be a murderer but here, through some bizarre looking glass, he is. “Are you all right?” Peter Lukas is saying cheerfully. “You look awful. You know, I should probably bring you to see Elias. He’ll be very interested in your return. And he just hates to be kept out of the loop.”

“Who did he kill,” Sasha murmurs.

“Your previous Archivist and Jurgen Leitner. Would right now be a good time for you? You don’t technically have a job here so it’s not as if you have any duties to be missing. Would you like to come with me?”

It’s clearly not a question, so she nods and follows him from the room. It’s all easier when she doesn’t have to navigate for herself, just has to follow him. She does desperately wish Melanie or Martin had time to come back with food, but she’s probably not going to pass out on the way. Do they have vending machines in prisons? She checks her pocket on the off-chance there’s money in there and finds a wallet. No guarantee that there will still be money inside next time she checks, so she carefully folds up a £5 note to keep in her hand, running her thumb over the crease over and over.

Peter Lukas talks extensively about the weather as he hails them a cab; when Sasha doesn’t have anything to say about it he starts talking to the cab driver. Sasha is kind of comforted to note that the cab driver seems to find him as _off_ as she does, making quick noncommittal replies and refusing to give personal information.

Peter Lukas’ gravity draws in the security guards and smooths the way through… something Sasha can’t help thinking of as another sort of labyrinth, but one made of rules and laws as well as walls and mirrors. And so, when she looks into this mirror/picture, Elias looks back out at her. She expects him to step through, but he just sits there in an uncomfortable chair with his hands folded in his lap and says, “Ah, Sasha. I must confess I wasn’t expecting you to return to us. Welcome back. I hope the Distortion’s accommodations weren’t too… wearing.”

“Why did you kill them?” she asks, hoping more for a denial than an explanation.

“They were planning to destroy the Archives. Peter, I do wish you wouldn’t spoil these kinds of things.” Behind Sasha there’s a shifting of fabric that must be a shrug. “We don’t currently have an opening for an archival assistant, and yet you cannot leave either. Quite the conundrum. Peter, I don’t suppose you could find the funding? Sasha is a hard worker and an excellent researcher.”

“This would be easier if you weren’t so possessive!” says Peter Lukas jovially. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

“I could just… find another job…” It feels wrong to say it, but she does feel kind of bad putting them both to trouble. Oh, but why the hell should she? Elias is a murderer and Peter Lukas is clearly some kind of horrible _thing_! “I’m not sure I want to work at the Institute anyway.”

Elias laughs. He doesn’t even seem to think that’s worthy of a real reply, which pisses her off.

“What happened to Tim, Elias?”

“He died heroically. Revenging his brother and saving the world. Now, Sasha, perhaps you should take some leave until Peter can sort out your pay. You really do look dreadful. I’d hate to think of you working in your condition.”

She just stares at him. Everyone is acting like all this is so _normal_. But Elias killed Gertrude Robinson and Tim died _saving the world_ and Jon is in the hospital and everything is so wrong. She wants so desperately to wake up and find that all of this has been a dream and the worst thing that has ever happened is that Martin got chased by worms for a little while. A large foggy hand lands on her shoulder and steers her away, and she doesn’t have the energy to shake it off. She feels cold and weak. She feels like if she lets him take her home now she’s never going to see Melanie and Martin again, so she whispers, “I’d like to go back to the Institute. M-Melanie was going to get me some food, and I wouldn’t, wouldn’t want to leave her hanging.”

“Nonsense,” says Peter Lukas. “You need some rest in your own home. Come on.”

And so she finds herself at the door of her flat, staring numbly at the lock. She can’t think where the key might be. It might be somewhere in the building, but it might also be anywhere in _London_. There’s no real way she’ll ever find it. She sinks down against the door, closes her eyes, and tries not to cry, from frustration and hunger and every damn thing that’s happened today. And because she is trapped in a strange maze of things that keep turning up and other things that disappear just when she really doesn’t want them to.

“Excuse me,” says a man’s voice above her, “but who are you?”

“I’ve been getting that a lot. It’s Sasha. I know, I look different. I’ve been going through some things.” She looks up and realizes who it is. “Oh! Ben! Look, I’m… I’m really sorry I haven’t paid my rent in… eighteen months? Fifteen? Something? But I noticed all my stuff is still in there so maybe I could… find a way to… I’ve lost my key.” She trails off miserably, without the heart to even consider how to repay what she owes. The prospect of having to find a new place while thousands of pounds in debt doesn’t help.

“I’m actually showing the flat today,” says Ben drily, “so I do have a key on me.”

She scrambles to her feet. “Please, _please_ don’t let it to someone else. Just tell me what you want me to do.”

“I’m going to need six months up front, and I’ll want to see a bank statement to see that you’re good for the rest. I don’t suppose you still have a job.”

“I do! I’m about to. I’m going to start work tomorrow. Can you let me in just for today, and then tomorrow I _promise_ I’ll get down to the bank?”

Shaking his head, Ben unlocks the door and holds it open for her. Why is it always doors? The function of a door is technically to prevent people from getting somewhere, but if you think about it isn’t the real function to help you get somewhere, instead of just having a wall with a photograph of a wall on?

Sasha narrowly avoids collapsing onto her couch in favor of making it to the kitchen, where food is traditionally found. None of the lights are working, so she supposes it’s not a surprise that the refrigerator is empty and dark. She hasn’t paid her electric bill in fifteen months, either.

Having any measure of control over her environment is going to take a lot of getting used to, isn’t it? For now she carefully searches the house for any food that hasn’t gone bad, and makes a peanut butter and tortilla chip sandwich. It’s awful, and she desperately doesn’t want to go shopping right now. How the hell much money does she even have? Is her laptop still sitting somewhere in the Archives, or did someone throw it away?

For some reason there's a £5 note in her hand. She puts tit in her pocket and finds her key inside, to her great surprise. That means she can actually go out today. There’s still a while before it gets dark. She should really go to the bank.

She looks reluctantly at the flat, which Ben has obviously cleaned for showing. Was he going to include her furniture, or were the next renters just going to throw it out?

She goes to the bank. It’s a long and completely hellish process complicated by the fact that even when she still understood how space worked she wasn’t entirely solid on how to get to the bank. She gets Google Maps to give her directions, which works until her phone dies, but of course she didn’t bring her charger and of course she doesn’t remember the name of the tube station near her flat, so it isn’t until hours after sunset that she makes it home.

Her flat is still there. It’s a bit of a surprise. She counts the doors in the sodium-orange-slashed darkness: front door, pantry door, bathroom door, bedroom door, closet door, door that—she doesn’t know where it goes. She pauses in front of that one. If she doesn’t know where it goes, she probably shouldn’t even open it. She sort of wants to, though. She almost wants to go back into the real labyrinth, which is predictable in its unpredictability. But no, tomorrow she is going to go into work and see Martin and Melanie and the new girl, who seems pretty cool, and she will get paid for it. That won’t happen if she goes through the door.

“Don’t you want to?” says Helen’s voice close beside her ear, and she jumps.

“I do, yeah,” she says. When she turns the black silhouette that is Helen is standing way too close, like she doesn’t understand personal space. “But I’ve got other stuff to do here. I’m, er, glad you came to visit, though. It’s nice to see a friendly face. Or, I suppose, imagine a friendly face because it’s too dark to see.”

“You really are the sweetest!” says Helen. “I haven’t had a friend ever since I took Helen through the second door. She wandered almost as long as you, but she was so much more frightened. I can’t imagine how it must be trying to get anywhere out there.”

“Yeah…” Sasha sighs and runs a hand through her hair. “Nothing makes sense. Or it makes so much sense I can’t understand it. I’m hoping I’ll get used to it.”

“I almost hope you don’t,” says Helen wistfully. “Then at least I’d be in good company.”

 

Sasha hasn’t really got the hang of sleeping; she wakes every hour or so and has to get up and check the walls, running her hands along them to see what shape they are. Several times she checks all the doors. She gives up pretty quickly and as soon as it’s light enough that she thinks the trains might be running she leaves the flat and goes for the Institute.

Nobody else is in yet, but it turns out that among the keys in her pocket is an outside key to the Institute. She rather likes the feeling of being there alone before anyone else.  It reminds her of when she would come in early just to get some quiet work done. Jon started coming in earlier because he didn’t want to be out in daylight like the silly vampire he is, and there was a sort of unofficial competition of who-can-come-earlier. Jon usually won. Because he’s a vampire.

Maybe Jon actually is a vampire, what with every absurd thing that’s going on. What a thought.

First she has a look around for her laptop; the Archive isn’t that big, but it still does take quite a long time to get through the whole thing. She doesn’t quite manage the _whole_ thing though, because by the offices she meets a startled scream and spins around with her heart pounding.

“I thought you were some kind of ghost or something!” wheezes Martin, clutching his chest. “You—Sasha, you just _vanished_ yesterday! We thought you’d been—been kidnapped! Or eaten!”

“I was a little bit kidnapped,” says Sasha with a grimace. She watches Martin, solid, almost _radiating_ heat and worry, a man with no sharp angles anywhere. “The new Director wanted to take me to see Elias.”

“Oh G-d, I’m so sorry,” says Martin. “Are you okay? He didn’t… do anything to you, did he?” Strangely the way he says it sounds almost like a threat. Very un-Martin-like, unless she’s misremembering him.

“He was a bit creepy but he just took me home in a cab.”

“No, _Elias_.”

“What could Elias do to me? I sort of assumed that mirror—sorry, window—in the prison visiting area was meant to… keep him in?”

Martin looks down, pursing his lips in a bitter grimace. “He doesn’t need to touch you to hurt you. Doesn’t matter, as long as you’re safe. You’re starting work again today?”

“Got to,” she sighs. “I owe an unimaginable amount to my landlord.”

“Oh! Well, I mean, I can always spot you a couple hundred quid, I’ve got quite a bit saved up since Elias seems to think pay rises make up for being trapped in Hell. And I can show you around the new research if you want. You’re going to need to get up to speed on… wow, _everything_.”

Sasha doesn’t ask what he means by _trapped in Hell_ as she follows him into the assistants’ office, listening with half an ear to his nervous chatter. She’s rather afraid to hear an answer that will mean they’re all trapped in the labyrinth, that it actually is real and not something Sasha can recover from.

And then she starts listening to the tapes, with Martin sat next to her piling them up as he sorts out which ones are important. She listens to her own evil doppelganger going about _her_ life, and absorbing though Jon’s narration is she has to sit upright in indignation. “That snake! I haven’t missed fifteen months’ rent at all! He was going to bleed me dry because I didn’t know I _had_ been paying up the whole time!”

Martin looks at her in mild alarm, and she waves him off. “My landlord. Don’t worry about it. I just need to get to the bank again after work. Damn, I should start charging my phone now. I don’t have electricity in my flat yet. Hang on.”

And then there’s the rest of the tapes. She listens to Jon descending into paranoia and then slowly clawing his way back out. She listens to Tim descending into bitter hatred and dying there. By the time Basira comes in Sasha is trying to conceal the fact that she’s weeping—unsuccessfully, as Martin can detect any emotion remediable with tea from a mile off. So she has a mug of strong black tea with cream and two sugars, as well as a packet of tissues, strewn around her when the door opens.

“Oh, hey, you’re back,” says Basira. “You get your job back, then?” And then when Sasha turns around, “Oh. You’ve been listening to the tapes. Yeah. Hey, Martin. Melanie in yet?”

“What, you didn’t spend the night? Ow!”

Basira smirks at him, shaking out her fist. “Not a word. When I gossip about _your_ love life I have the decency to do it behind your back.”

“That’s not more decent—”

“Martin’s got a love life?” says Sasha, ruining her try at casual by having to sniff loudly and wipe her nose.

“No,” they both say at the same time. Basira starts laughing, and Sasha can’t help but follow suit. “Anyway,” says Basira, “Martin’s been doing a lot of the recording but we all pitch in, and we all do research. ‘s very egalitarian. Right now we’re working on the Lightless Flame, we’ve been looking out for statements on them and we think we’ve found a couple. Martin, where’d you put the, the, the agenda? The logbook thing?”

It’s almost as if she never left. Martin finds her laptop in the desk she used to work at, and she spends the day hacking into secure databases for information on an incident in Manchester in 2011. It’s soothing. She goes out for lunch with Melanie at a really nice cafe, and Melanie insists on treating her. Shows her the mostly-healed bullet wound from an Indian war ghost. Looks down and smiles wearily and says it’s good to have her back. “I thought Jon was gaslighting me the first time I saw the Not-You. Every damn time I tried to tell someone they’d give me this same look, like I was crazy but they were too polite to call me on it. So it’s really nice to see you for that reason, too. You’re proof I’m not insane.”

“That’s actually a bit how I feel about you too,” says Sasha, laughing self-consciously. “You were the first person who properly touched me after I got out of the labyrinth. If… _if_ I did. Everything’s so crazy around here that I’m really not sure, you know? If it bled into the rest of the world.”

“It did, in a way.” Melanie props her chin up on one fist, showing Sasha her profile: her strong brow, snub nose, long nearly invisible eyelashes. “It’s always been like this but we weren’t deep in enough to notice, I guess. I want to kick my own ass ten years ago for getting into ghost hunting. But the whole world has _always_ just been this—this thin veneer of normal over the fathomless depths of terror underneath. Or something. And we literally can’t back out so we’ve just got to get used to it.”

“Martin said we were all… trapped in Hell,” Sasha says cautiously. “At the Institute, he means. We’re not allowed to quit.”

“Yeah. You listened to the tapes—Elias told us if he died he’d take us all with him but I—I still don’t know if I believe that. I guess I’m starting to. I still sometimes, hah, fantasize about breaking into prison and… Ugh, I used to be such a different person. I don’t want this to be your introduction number two to me. I’ve honestly never murdered anyone.”

Sasha starts laughing, at that, and can’t stop. That’s the bar for her life now: never murdered anyone. That’s how you know someone’s probably all right. At least they’ve never _murdered_ anyone.

 

They go back to the Institute after a long lunch—“It’s the least they owe us,” says Melanie drily—and they continue their work. Martin is absent for a large portion of the afternoon and comes back around four looking sweaty and slightly grey. “I guess you won’t be coming for drinks, then,” says Basira.

“No, I don’t think alcohol really mixes well with this. You two have a good time.”

Basira turns to her. “What about you, Sasha? Girls’ night out? Welcome back party?”

She’s not quite sure what to say to that. ‘I’ve only been in this reality for a day’? ‘I don’t trust my own senses _without_ the help of alcohol’? She settles on, “I have to go to the bank again and sort out my utilities. Another time maybe?”

“Yeah, all right. See you tomorrow.”

She watches Basira and Melanie leave, too weary for a moment to get up and follow them. Martin doesn’t move either; when she looks over he’s sitting there with his head in his hands, hunched over the table like… well, a bit like he’s already in his cups.

“Are you all right?” she asks. “Does reading statements really take that much out of you?”

“Don’t think I’m as _suited_ to it as Jon,” he says crisply without ever looking up. “It’s some kind of… eyeball magic thing. But really, I’m getting the hang of it. This was just a particularly bad one.”

“You want to tell me about it? I’ll walk you to the tube station.”

He sighs deep and long. “Yeah. All right. Thanks.” She waits as he gathers his things, hoping he won’t notice how much she really, really doesn’t know how to get to the tube station. “The thing about reading statements is that it wants you to sort of re-experience the emotions. And most of them are about being terrified or paranoid or hurt. So. This one had the eye—she was looking over her shoulder for years and it drove away everyone she loved and eventually she died horribly because of it. I don’t know if it’s better or worse that I already knew how it ended before I got it on tape. It’s hard not to see parallels to our situation. Hell, to me specifically! Sorry, that’s probably too much info.”

“No, it makes sense. I mean, I don’t know what it’s been like this whole time. It seems like it’s been awful for all of you who were still here.”

“The worst part is that I will literally never be able to leave as long as I’m alive. Or maybe the worst part is Jon being in an evil nightmare coma so we’re all in this limbo where we don’t know if anything will ever be normal again. Sasha, I think… I’m next in line. I think if he doesn’t wake up they’re going to make me Head Archivist.” She only understands part of why he sounds so abjectly terrified, but she doesn’t have to understand. She puts an arm around his shoulders and squeezes.

“I’ll go yell at Jon for you. I’ve always had a gift for making him listen, right? I’ll get him up in no time. And everything will be right back to normal amounts of creepy and terrifying.”

Martin laughs a cracking laugh; she withdraws her arm; they walk in silence the rest of the way.

But Sasha’s evening is not over when she gets off the train.

She pulls up Google Maps to navigate her to the bank again and follows it for a couple streets.  It takes her a while to realize that normally she wouldn’t have turned off Holloway at all, she shouldn’t be on a side road like this. Google tells her that Arthur Road is quite short and should be intersecting with Annette soon. But when she looks up, she can’t see the end of the walls of identical three-story complexes, all dark brick with white siding. Heart pounding, she turns around. Rather than the back of the Morrisons she sees the same endless road with the same endless apartment buildings. Despite it still being summer it’s already nearly dark, and there are very few streetlights. All of the windows on Arthur Road are dark. And there are no cars parked here.

She closes her eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath. Okay. So the Spiral is back for her. But if she plays her cards right she can come out of this with its favor. That’s an awful idea, isn’t it? She doesn’t _want_ its favor, she knows what people have to do, what they become, when they have the _favor_ of something like that. But the other option is dying, or worse, so it’s no real choice at all. So think, Sasha. What is it people do in the statements that impresses them? What comes to mind immediately is the kind of tests the Buried seems to like giving people. When you’re in my domain, what will you do? That woman, Caroline something, she made it out by lying down and giving her trust to the thing that was trying to kill her. Damn, and that creepy fire woman? She had to burn someone’s house down. Sasha can’t think of anything to do that she didn’t try before.

“Well, if you want me to serve you, you’ve got to let me out eventually,” she says. And then she turns around, closes her eyes, and walks. It must be hours that she walks, not thinking of anything in particular or letting herself hope for anything. Just her and the never-changing night noises.

Until she almost gets hit by a car.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” yells a man from somewhere to her right. “Are you fucking blind?” She squints her eyes open against the glare of his headlights, but he’s already driving around her and away. She’s standing out back of the Morrisons, breathing hard and slightly flushed. “Thanks,” she says to the night. And then, because she’s always had more curiosity than common sense, “I owe you one.”

 

When she gets there she finds that her bank closed at 5 PM and it’s now almost 6. There was no point in any of this. She’ll just have to print something out at the Institute tomorrow.

Damn, and it’s also too late to call her electric company.

Suddenly she wants to talk to her brother, or even her mum. But she’s not sure if they’ll recognize her. And they’ll have been told she’s dead. It’s one thing to fool her slimy landlord, he only sees her once a month when he comes sniffing around for rent. It’s another thing to fool people who think they’ve known a fake version of her since she was small. But she’s got to try, hasn’t she?

An ache rises up in her throat as she walks up toward Seven Sisters. She dials her brother.

“Hello?” he says, already sounding a bit spooked. “I think you’ve got a wrong number.”

“I haven’t, Peter,” she says. Just hearing his voice makes something in her chest loosen. “It’s Sasha. I don’t know what you’ve heard, but rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

“You sound… never mind that, no-one even told us you were dead! You just vanished and no-one could get a hold of you. I called your work and they said you’d just stopped showing up. I called you and you didn’t answer. Where the hell have you been?”

She sighs. “I’m not sure if you would believe me if I told you.”

“This had better not be about some kind of—human trafficking ring.”

“No, weirder.” She has to laugh at that. “I got sort of… lost in a maze outside of time. Please don’t scoff, Peter. I told you about those worm things that attacked the Institute? That’s the _least_ weird thing that happens there.”

“I won’t believe it until I see you.”

She chews her bottom lip for a moment before answering. “When you see me, you’ll think I’m someone else. Some very strange things happened to me, Peter. You’re not going to recognize me as your sister.”

“Do you honestly think I give a fuck? Look, where are you right now? I’ll pick you up and you can have dinner with us.”

“Around Holloway and Seven Sisters,” she says, trying to keep her voice steady. She doesn’t deserve him.

“I’ll just tell Sandy and then I’ll be right there. Fifteen minutes. Don’t you dare go anywhere.”

She doesn’t. And he actually does come. He’s out of the car and hugging her before she quite knows what’s going on; then he draws back. She can’t see his eyes for the glare on his glasses, but his eyebrows have risen almost up to his hairline. “Explain to me how you grew an extra foot. I thought you were _done_ growing in secondary school.”

“I told you it was weird,” she says weakly.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says, opening the passenger side door for her. “ _You’re_ weird.”

“No, you’re weird.” She hopes the Not-Her didn’t overwrite all their inside jokes. That would just be depressing.

“Strange Sasha,” he says as he takes off the parking brake.

She smiles out the window. “Peculiar Peter.”

“But really, what happened?”

“The Archive is magic. Not good magic. Mostly it’s the sort that hurts people if they end up in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“You can see why that’d be hard to believe.”

“I texted you a photo of those worms! I told you… didn’t I tell you goodbye and I love you in case I never saw you again?”

“Yeah, and the next day you called and said it was a joke. Sasha, are you all right?” She doesn’t get a changes to answer before he says, “Shit, what’s going on?”

Out the windscreen Sasha can see that the buildings have stretched out, stretched and stretched until every brick is a meter long. “It’s followed me,” she says numbly. “I’m so sorry, Peter. I didn’t think…”

“What?” he nearly shouts. “ _What’s_ followed you?”

“The Spiral—it’s like a… a nightmare that messes with your senses. I just thought it was done with me for tonight!”

He takes a deep breath and lets it out. She can hear he’s trying not to hyperventilate. “So you’re the weirdness researcher,” he says with forced lightness. “What do we do?”

All of a sudden it comes to her that she could tell him they need to get out of the car and walk. She could direct him to somewhere he would never leave. A thing posing as his sister takes advantage of his trust and his wife and parents never see him again. She bites her tongue almost hard enough to draw blood. “Close your eyes and go forward slowly. I’ll tell you if you’re about to run into anything.” Under her breath she whispers, “Not him. Anyone else, I promise you. But don’t make me take him. Just let us get out of here and don’t make me take him.”

She keeps her eyes open this time, to see Peter looking at her skeptically and then deciding to trust her. That aches, how much he trusts her. He closes his eyes and the car inches forward as she wills space to go back to normal. She tries to _know_ that this is a short pocket of weird space and if they just go forward a couple more feet they’ll be out of it.

Space collapses in on itself, seems to turn inside out. And Peter’s car is creeping forward on Seven Sisters with several impatient motorists sounding their horns at him. “You can open your eyes,” she says. As he does a cracked door fades from the road in front of them. It looks like someone took an axe to it. It’s her last warning.

Dinner is… extremely awkward. Sandy is clearly more aware than Peter is of how Sasha doesn’t look like she’s supposed to, and her smiles are stilted. She’s clearly just waiting for Sasha to leave so she can tell Peter kindly he’s going nutty and that is _not_ his sister. Sasha doesn’t try to explain anything to her because that hurts—she and Sandy got along very well before all this. Sasha remembers looking through wedding magazines with her in her flat, comforted by how she glowed for Peter. Now she seems to be barely restraining herself from telling Peter to let Sasha take the tube home.

It would be so easy to apologize and ask her to come out into the back garden and lose her forever in the maze of identical little lawns and hedgerows. And something inside Sasha sits up and takes notice as she remembers what she said: _anyone_ but Peter.

For a few minutes she’s so horrified that she can’t talk, just nods weakly along to whatever Peter is saying. But as long as she isn’t alone with Sandy, the Spiral can’t be mad at her for not _taking_ Sandy.

Peter excuses himself to go to the bathroom.

Sasha swallows. She’ll just sit in silence so she can’t trick Sandy into anything.

She can feel the seconds ticking by like each one is an individual grain of sand rubbing up against the inside of her spinal cord as it falls from her brain down her back.

“Sandy,” she says. Shit. Takes a deep breath. “I know you don’t recognize me. You think I’ve somehow tricked Peter into thinking I’m his sister. But please believe me that tricking anyone is the last thing I want. I’m just relieved to see him again. It’s been… nice to see you too, even though you don’t want to see me.”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” says Sandy, smiling apologetically over Sasha’s shoulder. “It’s really great to see you back. Only Peter hasn’t mentioned what happened to you.”

Sasha is standing up from her chair almost before she knows she is. “What happened to me is kind of unbelievable,” she says. “There’s something I should show you, so you’ll understand. Outside.”

“What is this?” asks Sandy. “Can’t you just tell me?”

“It’s related to my job. Come on. You remember I’ve always told you some kind of crazy stories about the Archives? This one’s even crazier.” She goes out the back door and holds it open for Sandy, who steps reluctantly out into the dark back garden, folding her arms tightly over her chest.

“Look,” says Sasha. She flicks on the outside light. The trees in the garden have grown wild and fractalline, and even their leaves have become dark and sharp like arrowheads. There are far more of them than Sasha remembers, almost a forest. “D’you see the kind of thing I have to deal with?”

“What did you do,” says Sandy in a voice that trembles slightly beneath her tight control.

“I just got unlucky.” Sasha takes a few steps into the trees, and as she expected (hoped; dreaded) Sandy runs after her.

“You don’t get to come here claiming to be my sister-in-law and show me this—whatever this is! Did you drug my _dinner_? Who are you?”

“Always and only Sasha James,” says Sasha. She thinks it must be a lie, now. “I’m so sorry about this.” Behind Sandy the house is no longer visible. Just the dark wood as far as either of them can see. “I really, really wish I had a choice. I wish it didn’t have to be you.”

“What are you _talking_ about?”

Sasha screws her eyes shut and clenches her fists until her fingernails bite into her palms. She’s just ruined Peter’s life. He’ll never speak to her again, if she can even get up the courage to admit to him this whole awful evening wasn’t a dream and she’s still alive. He’s going to—he’s going to think she’s a fucking ghost who only appeared to kill his wife in some kind of stupid revenge for letting her die. A hot tear slips down her cheek in the stiflingly quiet wood.

When she opens her eyes Sandy is gone. She doesn’t really have the strength to try to will herself back to Peter’s house. She could probably do it, though.

“Your first one,” says Helen’s sympathetic voice. There’s a door—probably yellow in the darkness—dimly visible on the trunk of a broad fractal tree. “Mine wasn’t much better, but G-d! At least I didn’t know him!”

“My brother’s never going to speak to me again,” says Sasha numbly. “I can’t even admit to him I’m alive. And everyone who actually understands this—everyone at the Institute—they’re going to hate me even more because they actually understand what I’ve done.”

“I won’t hate you for it.”

“Yeah. At least the other monsters don’t look down on me. Fuck. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t call you a monster. Especially seeing as I’m one too now. Fuck!” She looks up at Helen with tears already blurring her vision. Helen isn’t as dark as the forest, like she shines with her own unsettling internal light. A kind of pale yellow-white that doesn’t give light to anything around her. The trees pulse dark red like the veins behind her eyes and Sasha wishes she could throw up Sandy’s excellent dinner. “What’s happening to me,” she mumbles.

“My dear! You’re seeing things as they truly aren’t! Oh, let me help you.”

Helen gets her arm around Sasha’s shoulders to steady her. No part of Helen feels human, both too heavy and wrongly textured. Sasha just stands there as an unutterably long woman rubs soothing circles on her back, staring into the pulsing trees. The food sits heavy in her stomach like wet cement, like something she has no use for. Food is for humans, and she’s not one any more.

 

The following day she nearly doesn’t go into work. In the end she decides that sitting in her house all day will be much worse, so she does go in. Rosie seems a little confounded to see her but acts friendly enough. Martin, though, can immediately tell something’s wrong. He doesn’t pry, but he does provide her with more tea than she can reasonably drink and a packet of biscuits she doesn’t feel up to touching. She has a hard time looking up at any point, because every free inch of wall and shelf in the Archives is covered in swiveling eyes that track the progress of anyone who walks by. They seem to prefer to watch her over anyone else, like they can tell she doesn’t belong. Martin is bright gray with worry, which she can see him leaving on the tea mug.

Sasha is going crazy. This is fine. This is just what happens when you turn yourself into a fucking avatar of a god of delusion.

She is going to have to tell someone. But she can’t bear to say anything to the walking bonfire that is Melanie King, or to Basira—who looks relatively normal, actually, but Sasha just doesn’t know her very well. Researching statements is the only thing she can really do, and it gives her a headache. After work she persuades Martin to take her to see Jon and leave them alone for a little while, though he assures her that he’ll be _right_ out in the hall if you need _anything_ , okay? Absolutely anything at all. You just don’t look well, so stay safe.

She finds herself staring at Jon’s diminished and flattened sleeping form, unwilling to get any closer because of the massive eyeball that takes up the whole ceiling, staring unblinkingly down at him. Jon is hooked up to a silent crumbling heart monitor, and his chest doesn’t move, but his eyes swivel feverishly in his head as if he’s experiencing the most upsetting REM sleep ever.

“Hey, Jon,” she says, her voice breaking. “You look like absolute shit. Do you feel as bad as I feel? Do you feel that thing watching you? You must.” Deep breath. “I’m sorry for disappearing on you. I feel like I could have done _something_ to make sure it didn’t come to this, but maybe that’s just my ego. You certainly couldn’t stop it, and you were always much better at this than me. G-d, it sucks to see you like this. You were the one person I always thought would be working no matter what. Like if your leg got cut off I bet you’d make Martin bring you statements in the hospital and you’d complain that you couldn’t get into the Archives. But now that thing is keeping you asleep, isn’t it? It’s _feeding_ on you. I wonder if I could…”

She takes a step forward, and then another, until she’s standing under the gaze of the enormous eye with him. It refocuses on her with an audible moist clicking sound. She can see her reflection in its huge dark pupil, which is nearly as big as her head—and that’s good, because while it’s looking at her it isn’t looking at Jon.

As if in response to that thought the pupil splits in two like a cell dividing and the new one turns back down to him. Sasha kind of wants to throw up. But she’s not going to _give_ up. She’s going to assert the Spiral in this neutral territory until that fucking eye loses its hold on him. She glares up at it, and the walls of the room bow outward with the pressure of her glare. The eye can’t blink with no eyelids to speak of, but it seems to shrink into itself a little bit. “That’s right,” Sasha says. “Run away. He might be yours but you can bloody well use him the normal way. Or do you want to see something _really_ _unpleasant_?”

Ugly acoustic tiling closes over it like an eyelid, and the bulge flattens out until the ceiling is smooth and rectangular once again.

She takes a deep breath, lets it out. Her heart is absolutely galloping. “Jon,” she says, shaking his shoulder. “Wake up.”

And he actually stirs, to her surprise. He takes a sudden gasping breath and his chest rises for the first time; she actually sees the life go back into him as the optimistic heart monitor begins to beep. His eyes flutter halfway open.

“Wha’,” he says. “Where ‘s it?”

“Gone, at least for now.”

He sits up directly into a deep hunch over his knees and grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes. He looks desaturated still, and there seems to be an awful halo of eyelashes around his head. “How long… have I been asleep?”

“Over a month. The eye was keeping you.”

He stills. “That voice.”

“Yeah, hi. Sasha here, back from the dead. Don’t worry if you don’t recognize me, I’m sure you of all people know how weird things have been.”

“ _Sasha_.” He looks at her with eyes that feel literally piercing, like a bug pinned to corkboard. “What’s going on? Tell me how this happened.”

So that’s what it feels like to be compelled. It’s… kind of unpleasantly slippery. Oh, G-d, like touching a wet eye? But _her_ it slips off, if she concentrates. “There’s not a recorder anywhere in here, is there? Only I’d prefer not to feature in your nightmares if it’s all the same to you.”

He seems to be struggling to speak, looking around the room as if for an explanation. “How… did you know about that?”

“Elias recorded a statement about it, the absolute creep. G-d only knows why. Look, I absolutely will tell you everything, but not right now and not in the Archives. G-d, it’s good to see you again, even if you look like—like you could use a proper night of sleep. Can you stand?”

Jon swings his legs off the bed, but before he can try to stand two nurses rush in and make him lie down again, start taking his vitals and asking him if he can feel this or that or squeeze their hand. Martin comes in after them and stares in naked astonishment. His whole being lights up sort of astonished/happy pink when he sees Jon awake and talking, so much that Sasha has to avert her eyes in embarrassment. He doesn’t look away from Jon as he whispers, “What did you _do_? I thought you were kidding about yelling at him until he woke up.”

“Er,” says Sasha, desperately not wanting to admit what she actually did. Martin is going to find out _eventually_ because Jon is going to find out eventually because he’s the one person she can never lie to. “I sort of cancelled out Beholding’s territory. Yes, I’m aware that’s something I shouldn’t be able to do. I may have been… claimed.” She mumbles this last part like it can stop Martin from hearing.

“Claimed?” he hisses. “By _what_?”

“th’ smllrl.”

“Didn’t catch that.”

“I was right,” she says aloud. “That I’d never leave the labyrinth.”

“Oh. G-d, I’m…”

“Yeah.”

“But you saved Jon.”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you.”

Eventually Jon is convinced to lie back down by Sasha and Martin’s promises to tell him what’s going on. The nurses leave them with him and go off to contact whoever checked him in. Probably Elias, or maybe Peter Lukas in place of him. As soon as they leave the room Jon turns his burning stare on her and Martin again. “I won’t ask,” he says carefully, “but I would very much like to know everything.”

“That’s been obvious since the moment I met you,” says Sasha. Martin snorts very quietly beside her. “You know, it’s almost a pity I really don’t want this recorded. If you did compel me I’d be able to tell a hell of a story.”

“I mean, I could—”

“No. I mean, please don’t, it feels slimy. Like… fresh tears. I’ll just tell you.”

And she tells him. Just having him there pulls it out of her, a little, so that the story sounds a lot better than the one she told Basira. As she talks she fancies he’s memorizing it so he’ll never have to ask for the details again. It’s unnerving—sometimes his halo of eyelashes closes around his face as if there’s an eye inside his skull _the size of his skull_ —and yet comforting, because Jon is, even after everything she listened to, a rock. It comes out easily in a way she never could have told any of the assistants. When she’s done he sighs and leans back into his pillows like it’s tired him out.

“You’re like me,” he murmurs.

Not really. In Sasha’s opinion she’s a lot more like Helen. Jon is practically blameless compared to the two of them. And yet—and yet he chose this in a way they didn’t. He had a choice, and he made it, and now he is what he made himself. Sasha is what she was made into. “Monster pals?” says Sasha, with only a faint grimace to suggest it’s a joke.

“Please don’t ever say that again,” says Jon.

“No, I didn’t think it was particularly funny either,” she agrees. “But I’m sure you’ll be up and about in no time, since there’s nothing wrong with you. They might even let you come into work tomorrow.”

“If not I’ll call you. I need to keep up with the statements.”

She gets up and lets Martin fuss with his blankets, and as they’re about to leave she leans in and murmurs, “Do you still have to _eat_?”

He looks up at her, faintly alarmed. “Do you not?”

“Well, see you tomorrow.”

“Sasha—”

She strides out, closely followed by Martin. His whole being changes the moment the door is shut, like a melting popsicle that just got brought into full sunlight. And Sasha knows exactly what’s wrong. Jon barely even acknowledged Martin’s existence. He has always found Sasha far more interesting, a fact she has never felt so guilty for. She doesn’t try to reassure Martin about it: Oh, you know, I’m just the one he was taking the statement from. Acknowledging that she’s noticed will only make him feel worse. Instead she claps him on the back and says, “We’re going for drinks. We can invite the others if you want, but _you_ look like you need a drink.”

“I do, at that,” he mutters, pulling out his phone. “Where’d you want to go?”

“I dunno,” she says vaguely. “I don’t hang around this part of town often. D’you know anywhere?”

“Nah. I was just gonna Google it. I can do that while we walk. Come on.”

They walk to a Greggs, where Basira meets them about twenty minutes later, and they all get some sausage rolls in them so later they can get absolutely pissed. Being drunk does make the hallucinations a little worse, but mostly they lose definition and frankly when Sasha is drunk it doesn’t seem different from normal. But a little more glowy. Around midnight by Martin’s phone clock they stumble out of the fourth bar all hooked together by the arms and loudly singing a song Sasha doesn’t know the words to so she just goes “NA NA NAAAA NA NA NA NAAAAA NA!” along with Martin and Basira. Basira tries to take them through a shortcut she “totally knows, guys, it’s fine” and this, unsurprisingly, is a fuck awful idea.

“Sasha,” says Martin. “Sasha. Sasha. The walls are melting.”

“Like hot wax,” sings Basira. “Wait, fuck. What the hell.”

“Sasha! Quit it!”

Sasha straightens up, nearly toppling over Basira on her left. “What’d I do?”

“That! Look at the building! It’s melting, isn’t it!”

The building does sort of look like it’s melting, but so does everything else. Martin kind of looks like he’s melting too.

Almost as soon as she has that thought Basira lets out a startled yell and tries to disentangle herself from Martin, backing into Sasha and sending them both into the side of the building. It does feel like wax, gooey and pliable but no warmer than the night air.

“What’ve you done to me! Sasha! Fix it! Fix it!”

Martin’s panic cuts through the drink a little, and she looks properly. His face is starting to run off his skull, his hands slowly losing their form like there’s no bone underneath. She leans over Basira and vomits, and then Basira follows suit, and then Sasha resolves to keep her eyes _closed_ so she can’t melt anyone else. Oh G-d. Oh G-d. That’s not permanent, is it? It’s just a distortion, it’s just _tricking the senses_. The Spiral doesn’t really change anything, but if it’s real to everyone, what does that matter? Sasha tries to picture Martin as he should be, but she can’t really recall what his face looks like under his normal worried gray.

“G-d, I really need to sober up,” she moans. “I’m never drinking again. Is he still melting?”

“Yes!” shrieks Martin. His voice is starting to go too.

“No,” says Basira. “Look, Martin, you’ve just got to kind of, kind of not let it get to you. Doesn’t matter. You’re normal.” Sasha hears her get up and walk unsteadily toward Martin until there’s the sound of her hand gently hitting his cheek. “Solid. Normal.”

It’s probably that that finally lets Sasha picture him as he’s supposed to be; she hears him sob in relief and sink to the ground. “This is fucked,” he’s whimpering. “This is so fucked. Give me back the worms any day.”

“I’m sorry,” says Sasha thickly, finally opening her eyes. Martin looks normal, if a bit green. Basira seems to be bubbling a little bit. Maybe steaming, though it’s too dark to really tell. “I’ll never get drunk again, and I’ll learn to control it better. G-d, I’m going to have to eat another person! I should have just let it eat me, at least I’d’ve died with morals.”

Basira offers a hand and pulls Sasha to her feet. “Nah, don’t talk like that. We all do what we’ve gotta do to survive. And there’s plenty of people who could use some eating.”

“You’re such a fucking cop,” Sasha mumbles.

The ensuing argument about police ethics gets her most of the way back home without her having to think about anything but her companions’ voices. This time she remembers where her key is first try ( _and_ it’s actually there) and she stumbles inside to collapse gratefully onto her bed. Worry about it tomorrow. Worry about aaaallll of it tomorrow.

 

When tomorrow comes Sasha doesn’t have a hangover. She doesn’t eat breakfast, which she can really see saving her a lot of money in the long run. But she still _can_ eat if she wants to? She remembers hazily throwing up her entire dinner last night so it’s unclear if she ever would have digested it.

This is such a fucked up thing to be thinking about on the train to work.

She gets a coffee on principle, because she likes having something to sip on the way to work. She walks distractedly, not really recognizing any of the streets she passes, but she makes it to the Institute without trying. Later she’ll wonder about that, but for now she’s just feeling really optimistic. She makes small talk with Rosie and a couple early risers among the custodial staff and even manages to smile at the unblinking eyeballs that begin to cluster more densely on the walls as she makes it down to the Archives. She likes to think they’re confused by her acting friendly toward them.

By the time the other assistants start to come in Sasha is already working on getting remote access to the Cardiff Police Department’s arrest records. Basira (who clearly has a hangover) gives her a good-natured evil look; Martin carefully doesn’t avoid talking to her, but he can’t quite bring himself to look at her and his hand keeps quickly darting to his cheek as if to check. Melanie sprawls in the chair to her left with her feet up on the table while she reads. “Sometimes I like to ruin stuff just because Elias isn’t here to stop me,” she says. Martin makes a small, apparently involuntary noise of disapproval as he looks up from the statement he’s silently reading.

That’s about when they all receive a text message at the same time.

_Have been released from the hospital. Expect me to be in around lunch time. Would someone like to stay to fill me in?_

“Not it,” says Melanie.

“No-one was going to make you do it,” says Basira. “Martin’s going to do it, obviously.”

“Did you hear me when I said it’s not more decent to gossip about people to their faces?” Martin wonders.

“No, can’t recall you saying that. Hey, this means we don’t have to read statements for the recorder any more. If anything’s worth going out to lunch, that is! Martin, d’you want us to get you something?”

“It’s ten in the morning.”

“I just like to be prepared.”

They lapse into silence again. Sasha copies everything into a text document and starts fiddling with delimiters so it can go in Excel. She really doesn’t need all of these, but eventually she’ll need to look up another one. Actually, she might find some interesting stuff by searching for certain keywords. If only her laptop hadn’t spent too long sitting in the Archives and grown a single accusing eye where the webcam used to be. It’s awfully distracting.

“Hey, there’s masking tape here somewhere, right? For labelling?”

“Surest place to find it is in artefact storage,” says Melanie vaguely. “Don’t we have that label printer for upstairs?”

Ugh. Great. Artefact storage. She gets up and goes to the door. What exactly is the path to artefact storage? It’s hard to think clearly with all the eyes on the walls staring at her. Unblinking. Following her path. How in hell does anyone manage to work here? How did _she_ manage to work here for so long? And how does she keep coming to the same stupid intersection where there aren’t even any loops in the damn place? It’s like the Eye _wants_ her to get lost. Like it’s sabotaging her.

Because it’s been her procedure for something like a year and a half, she walks. Eventually she will get somewhere. She walks and walks until she gets a text from Melanie.

_you didn’t disappear again did you?_

_No, why?_

_just that you’ve been gone for 40 minutes_

_UGH. Can you come pick me up? I keep getting stuck at the T near the interview rooms_

_yeah??? I guess??_

It takes Melanie all of ninety seconds to find her, frowning in concerned confusion. “It’s not a huge place. Did you really get lost?”

“It’s all the eyes. I keep getting turned around. They don’t want me to find artefact storage, G-d knows why. Sorry for putting you to the trouble.”

“All the… eyes.”

“On the walls. I know you can’t see them. I have this thing now where I can see things that aren’t there but are, er, still true? More true than reality, sort of. I don’t know if Basira mentioned.”

“Why would Basira have mentioned,” says Melanie.

“Let’s just say I project when I’m drunk. Hell, I never actually told you I’ve been claimed. This is—this is all so frustrating. I’m making a mess of it.”

“The Spiral claimed you,” Melanie concludes. “That’s fucked up, sorry. And now you see things just all the time?”

“It’s useful… I can always sort of tell whose territory I’m on. But I don’t think the Archives likes me much.”

“It wouldn’t, would it? Well, come on. It can’t get _me_ lost on the way to artefact storage. You want to tell me about it?” When Sasha’s silent for a moment she says, “We’ve all done awful things, you know. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve tried to kill Elias. He always—smug bastard.”

“But you’ve never _actually_ killed someone,” says Sasha quietly.

“Is it really that different?”

“I think it is. Melanie, it was my sister-in-law. Peter invited me for dinner and I—I fed his _wife_ to the Spiral. We were good friends before I… got. Replaced. How the hell am I supposed to keep going after that? The only thing I can do is try and pretend to myself that it never happened!”

“Shit,” says Melanie.

“Yeah! Shit! I’m a monster in every possible sense now! I eat people’s _fear_ and I kill people and I melted Martin’s _face_ off last night! And it’s only going to get worse from here until I’m this hollow shell that looks like a human if you don’t look too close—”

“Breathe,” says Melanie. Her hands are heavy on Sasha’s shoulders again. “First thing you do is don’t hyperventilate. I can’t _believe_ I’m talking someone else down. We’ll all—we’ll all find a way to deal with this, somehow. Martin’s face seems fine, so.”

Sasha takes in a great shuddering breath and lets it shudder out of her again. “I can’t believe you’re on my side here,” she says accusingly, letting her head fall so her cheek rests in Melanie’s hair. “I killed someone.”

“Everything’s fucked anyway,” says Melanie. She moves her arms so that she’s slowly rubbing Sasha’s upper back, though she’s too short for it to really work. “We’ll get used to it like we got used to everything else. You think it will piss off Elias? G-d, what an absolute knob. I hope he’s so shocked he chokes on his own spit and dies.”

Sasha has to laugh at that.

“Listen, now you’ve got magic evil powers it’d be cake for you to break into his prison and help me kill him. He can’t actually do anything but tell you awful secrets that emotionally destroy you. As long as you don’t let him talk you’ll be fine. Just let me come.”

“It’d love that,” says Sasha, with some difficulty. “It… would love that so much. He’s a meal and a half, isn’t he?”

Melanie laughs. “Creepy. C’mon, let’s go get that tape. If you want to talk about plotting his downfall we should do it in the tunnels. He can probably see us from prison. Dickhead. What d’you need the tape for, anyway?”

“My computer grew an eye and I can’t concentrate while it’s staring at me. It’s not like I have anyone to Skype with anyway.”

“You sure it’s not the government that’s watching you!” hoots Melanie. “Half of Georgie’s university friends went around with tape over their webcams!”

That makes it easier, really. Melanie making a joke out of it. Maybe Sasha’s an awful monster whose part-time job is driving people mad, but at least it’s a good joke.

Sasha is so fucked.

 

Jon arrives a bit early and everyone clusters around him like the protagonist he is. Melanie doesn’t even want to see him, just wants him to see that she’s not talking to him. There’s a second face superimposed over her feigned boredom, frothing at the mouth and grinding her teeth. Basira leans into her side and takes her hand as if she can see it too, and they leave on an early lunch.

If Jon in the hospital was unnerving, he’s _much_ worse here. His eyeball aura is off the charts, and whenever he opens his mouth wide enough Sasha can see the wet white gleam blocking his throat. He also seems to have somehow inherited Gerard Keay’s tattoos, but they move and blink restlessly. It makes her a bit nauseous, and apparently it’s obvious to Jon. “Sasha, did you hear my question?”

“No,” says her mouth without any input from her brain. “Don’t do that. It’s just all the eyes are distracting. Could you tone it down?” From his totally nonplussed expression, he cannot. “Sorry, stupid question. I’ll try and focus. Would you mind if I closed my eyes?”

“I wonder if it has occurred to you that working in a supernatural institution could be, er, counterproductive in your current condition.”

“Current,” says Sasha. “Really. Also you know I can’t leave.”

“Right. Damn.”

“If… I think I have an idea,” Martin offers. “We’re pretty sure Elias controls who’s, er, _technically_ employed here, still? I don’t know that he’d want, you know, an avatar of something else, working here?”

“I couldn’t leave you all to deal with it alone!” Sasha protests, but Jon is making a considering noise. “I can deal with it, really. I’ve already gotten used to all the eyeballs on the walls, just give me some time.”

“If you’re sure…”

“I am. Martin, why don’t you do the explaining? You understand everything a lot better than me anyway.”

“Yes. Right. So, as the recorded statements are filed by date it should be easy to catch you up there, but we also have a couple of projects that we haven’t recorded for yet. If you wait till this evening we might be able to have the smithy one ready. If you just want a quick statement though, we could probably find something…”

Sasha tunes out, forcing herself to look at Jon’s face in quick bursts. The halo isn’t so bad since the lighting in the Archives is dim, but the tattoos make her dizzy to look at. It’s just as well most of the visible ones are on his hands. She gets a text and fumbles with her phone, glad for an excuse to look down. It’s Basira with a link to a restaurant menu, telling her to take her time because they’re taking a long lunch as usual. Disturbingly, the message reads itself out loud in a distorted version of Basira’s voice.

“Think you could do that, Sasha?”

“Huh?”

“Statement 0130914. The landslide. Just a quick followup.”

“Oh, yeah, sure! Sorry. I think I might… uh, never mind. I’ll get on that.”

She can hear faint whispering everywhere. Why is the Archives _whispering_? That’s not an Eye thing. She can hardly hear herself think and it’s getting difficult to suppress her visceral reaction, rising like bile in her throat: _I’m going crazy_. Of course that’s not how it works. It’s a totally meaningless thing to say at this point. But she still. Feels. Like she is going crazy.

She stumbles her way to the toilet and locks herself in. “Thought you’d do a bit of double-dipping,” she mutters, sinking to the tile floor. “Even if I don’t feed you anyone else I’m plenty scared enough for a snack. Is that it? Stop _doing_ this. It’s not—it’s not helpful! It’s just—it’s just—RGH! Stop it!”

A hand plants itself on her shoulder. “You’ve just got to get used to it. It doesn’t take back its gifts. I’ve… tried. And it is a gift, Sasha.”

“It’s a shit gift.”

“Many are.  Especially if you don’t know how to use them. This is a test, Sasha. If you don’t pass…”

“I really will go mad,” she says, taking Helen’s offered hand and gets to her feet. Still pointy and moist and unpleasant. “It’ll eat me up.”

“Most likely.”

“How do I learn how to control it? Can I just _stop_ seeing things?”

Helen laughs, soft and dry and a little condescending. And a little sad. “No. You’ve got to become something that can understand it.”

Sasha looks down at her, feeling sick. Helen herself looks no different than she always has done, miles and miles of a person twisted up into a woman of average height and a rather frumpy bob haircut. “How… how old are you?”

“Somewhat older than the concept of time, I think.”

“No, I mean Helen. How old was Helen.”

“Oh. Er, around thirty-eight, I think.”

“Not that much older than me, really…” Sasha murmurs. “Is there, is there any way you can help me? Figure it out? G-d, I don’t want to _become something_ that can understand it. I’m so afraid. I’m just always trying to forget that.”

“That’s what it is to be human,” says Helen almost wistfully. “I almost miss it.” Her hand comes up to frame Sasha’s cheek, not quite touching, but Sasha can feel it anyway. It feels like little sparks are grounding themselves in her cheek from Helen’s hand. “I shouldn’t. You’re a colleague. But your fear… Yes, Sasha, I can help you. I can help you become something like me. It’s a choice you make, to give up your humanity. I think the Archivist made that choice quite a long time ago. Without humanity it can’t hurt you. It won’t be so unpleasant.”

Sasha swallows. Still Helen’s hand won’t close the gap. _She’s_ going to have to do it. “What do you mean by humanity? Will I still be able to… to have friends? I know I gave up my family—G-d—” Her face crumples and tears sting her eyes. She looks down and away to hide them. “But Melanie and Basira and Martin, and Jon, they’re the only people who could possibly understand this.”

“I don’t know,” says Helen with wide-eyed frankness. “I’ve tried being friends with the Archivist, and I’m not sure if my failure is a reflection on me or on him. But you’ll have me no matter what.”

Sasha takes Helen’s hand to pull it away from where it was still hovering by the side of her head. She squeezes it and feels the stones grinding together. “Yeah. I mean, that really is a comfort.”

“Look at me, Sasha.” Sasha looks. “Are you ready?”

Sasha nods hesitantly. Helen leans up and whispers an inch from her: “Are. You. Ready?”

Sasha James, standing in the loo at work and for once watched by no swiveling eyes, closes the gap. Helen’s lips are the lipsticky normal human lips of a real estate agent who hasn’t kissed anyone since college.

“Yes,” Sasha says. “I’m ready to be something new with you.”


End file.
